Does the location of a citation on a page have any relivance?
-
We have been working on local SEO quite a lot for our small business, trying to understand why we are consistantly outranked by our competators. I understand there are many factors at play here.
I realize that DA & PA, Places page optimization, and on page optimization also play a role, but for the purpose of this question i would like to focus on just one factor: citations.
From your experiance with local SEO do you find that a citation that is located closer to the top of the page holds more weight than a citation buried further down a page?
Here is an example:
http://www.yellowpages.ca/search/si/1/Storage-Self+Service/Toronto+ON/in this case the people paying for the priority positions on that page are right at the top of the page, rather than buried 5 pages into the results. in fact they are right at the top of each page of the results, so over and over again they are above the free listings.
I have heard that google considers the value of a link based on its position on the page. So would it be safe to assume that google also considers the value of a citation based on its position on the page?
Thank you for your time,
Storwell -
I have been enjoying your comments more and more. It is very clear you are reading great articles and expanding your knowledge every day.
I had not read the article you shared before now. I enjoyed it very much.
Matt Cutt's video is from Aug 2009. He shared that originally links were treated equally but Google's link analysis was growing and becoming more sophisticated. The article you referenced was written Mar 27, 2010.
This type of article is exactly why I am a member here at SEOmoz. That article represents the thorough work and analysis of SEO experts on the valuation of links. It's a great article. I am not 100% confident in their findings, but they are very logical and I will accept them and incorporate them in my future efforts.
So it appears you answered your own question, and thank you for taking the time to share the results.
-
that is not exactly what i got from reading this: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/10-illustrations-on-search-engines-valuation-of-links
-
In short, most links on a page have equal value. Google does reserve the right to weigh links, but overall I have not seen any indication that links at the top of a page are weighed higher then a link at the bottom of a page.
A recently noted exception would be links in footers. Matt Cutts talks about footer links and you can also see how potentially links in the main content area can be worth more then links on sidebars in the future.
-
Doesn't this completely contradict Google's motivations?
It seems that if this was the case, then google could easily be gamed by purchasing position on all these local directories. Wouldn't this be the opposite of what google wants?
In the case of links, google does their very best to ignore paid links.
Why would they turn around and give benefit to paid citations?
-
Not only are they above the free listings but they are on every page at the top. Thus citing your example of 5 pages they would have 5 citations; Where a free listing would only appear on one.
In addition, Google has a crawl budget - how long they spend on a site and page. If these limits are reached there is a possibility that the lower listings don't get crawled or acknowledged especially if they are buried deep into the navigation levels of a site.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Gallery page with text below, Or split into two pages
So i'm a professional photographer, so my gallery is pretty important, probably more imprtant than the copy supporting it. Right now I have a gallery with supplementary info pushed below. I'm wondering if it would be better to remove the text from the bottom and put it to the top of it's own page, and leave the gallery page as just images, or keep it mixed with both. You can see my site directly HERE if you would like to see what i'm talking about exactly- the lightbox is broken, its a work in progress.
Image & Video Optimization | | JPRichardson0 -
Practice Group location list Vs Individual Doctor list
We are a Healthcare system which has 70+ medical service/practice locations and 2500+ individual doctor lists. What is the best way manage these locations list, so they are not completing with each other in local search. for example, if search for "urgent care", we will like our medical practice group location show up before individual doctor in local search. What is the best practices for managing your group location lists and your individual doctor lists? Thanks!
Image & Video Optimization | | HonorHealth0 -
How much can our page title, URL and alt-tag differ without negatively affecting SEO?
We are a bridal store selling wedding dresses and bridesmaids dresses. We are wanting to know how much our URL and page title can differ, whilst still optimising SEO. For example, for the category Wedding Dresses, the URL contains wedding dresses, so can we use " the best wedding dresses in Sydney" in the page title? For the bridesmaid dresses (URL is /bridesmaiddresses/) can we use " buy best bridesmaid dresses online in Australia"? Can we use terms such as "buy best black dress in sydney", "buy online in australia" or "shop online in sydney" in the alt-tag, additional from the page title .i.e. adding extra keywords in the alt-tag that do not appear in the title? Would this be classified as keyword stuffing? In our main categories .e.g. Wedding Dresses, can we add "best wedding dress store", "buy wedding dresses from best wedding store in sydney" in the alt-tag? Thank you.
Image & Video Optimization | | CostumeD0 -
Will it help/hinder our local seo by including our local adress on multiple pages?
We have a large website that targets the whole UK. It has landing pages for every town in the UK. For the towns that this particular business has a bricks and mortar hq, we have set up a local/places page. We then added the corresponding places adress to the appropriate town page on the website. This is just a handful compared to the 3,000,000 towns our site aims to rank for. Question: Would it help or hinder our SEO efforts to add the local addresses to other town pages in close proximity to the original? For instance say we have a places address for croydon in London. Would it hurt to add this address to pages that target towns near croydon, such as Mitcham. All opinions greatly appreciated. Cheers!
Image & Video Optimization | | Silkstream0 -
A lot more citations than competitors OK?
Is it OK to have 2 times as many citations as competitors? I want to make up for factors such as less reviews.
Image & Video Optimization | | BobGW0 -
Google Places Multiple Locations Strategy
Hi, I have client who is a psychology college that has multiple locations across the United States. We currently have a Google places setup for their main location which is in Chicago. They also have multiple locations in California and Washington d.c. My question is what is the best strategy for setting up Google places for each one of their locations? can it all be done from the Chicago Google places account or do I have to build out individual Google places accounts for each location. Thanks!
Image & Video Optimization | | MasonInteractive0 -
What is the SEO benefit of embedding YouTube videos on a page?
Is there SEO benefit to embedding YouTube videos made my other people or companies on pages? The indirect benefit would be a better user experience and increased perceived value and usefulness of the page which could lead to more links. Are there any other benefits?
Image & Video Optimization | | ProjectLabs0 -
Multiple Location Pages and Duplicate/Thin Content
I have a client who has 10 locations throughout Colorado. Each has it's own claimed Google Places profile. I know that Google is encouraging a unqiue page on your site for each individual office location, and then aligning each location's page with it's Google Places profile. Could this create a duplicate content or thin content issue though? Each location's page on the site would have essentially the same or similar content -- just with a unique address and phone number. They're a law firm, so the company information is the same across all locations, other than the address and phone number. We could re-write the content so it's not completely the same, but for 10 locations that gets a little crazy, and still doesn't create truly unique/original content. If we get too creative with the content on each page, it would be counterproductive because these are landing pages so i want them to have the firm's major selling points to help convert. Also, the firm is ranking very well in organic and blended/local search for Colorado terms and all individual locations EXCEPT Denver, the biggest and most important market by far. Trying to move from page 3 to page 1 in Denver is important enough to warrant making the necessary changes. I just don't want to damage all the progress we've already made. I look forward to your feedback! Thanks!
Image & Video Optimization | | djreich0
